


Are You Making This Magic?

by LittleLostStar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Floriography, Happy Ending, M/M, YOI Fantasy Zine, also a Secret Garden AU, baron in the trees AU, victor nikiforov is a gay disaster, with a magic garden whose flowers say what he cannot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 23:47:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17273447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLostStar/pseuds/LittleLostStar
Summary: For twenty years, ever since the death of his parents, Baron Victor Nikiforov lived in the trees of his family's grand estate, keeping watch over his mother's favourite garden. Nothing has grown there for two decades, ever since the Baroness' death; the garden is closed off, withdrawn, and dead--until the day that a stranger named Yuuri opens the door.~When he looked in on the garden, Victor saw a new flower sitting in the dirt, sprung up overnight as if by magic. It was a bright red rose.Victor had to hang upside down by his ankles in order to grab it, nearly falling on his head as the thorns dug into his flesh.“How did you get here?” he murmured, surprised at the fluttering panicked excitement he felt as he stroked the rose’s petals. “Flowers don’t just come out of nowhere. They need to be planted in order to bloom.”





	Are You Making This Magic?

**Author's Note:**

> I was lucky enough to be accepted as a writer for _Morning Sun, Moonless Night_ , the YOI fantasy zine, and I'm finally able to share the piece I wrote with all of you! I hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> Special thanks to [babypears](http://babypears.tumblr.com/post/181648252628/my-full-drawing-for-the-yoifantasyzine-a-collab), who collaborated with me on this fic and produced the stunning piece of art that is linked at the very end. Make sure to go give her some love!

When Victor Nikiforov was five years old, his mother, the Baroness Tatania Nikiforova, led him through the verdant lawns and monolithic topiaries of their grand estate. They walked for a very long time, until they reached the ivy-covered wall at the edge of the grounds. Victor watched, wide-eyed, as his mother lifted the curtain of ivy to reveal a door, which she unlocked with a big brass key. As she pushed the door open, the sunlight fell on her face, and Victor thought his mother looked like an angel.

“Come,” she said with a smile, holding out her hand to lead him inside. “Come, Victor. I want you to see this.”

The garden exploded with flowers of every colour and shape, covering the ground so densely that the soil could barely be seen, cascading down the stone walls like an impossible waterfall frozen in time. Victor and his mother traversed the short walkway, which widened into a larger clearing with a pond. Victor looked this way and that, his young eyes overwhelmed with the sheer beauty of it all.

“When I was first betrothed to your father, I was very lonely,” Tatania said wistfully, as they sat in the crook of an arbutus tree’s bifurcated trunk. “Your father gave me this garden as a gift; we sat here together and spoke honestly, for the first time since we’d met, and truly got to know each other. The flowers bloomed around us, in that first summer, and have remained here ever since. We fell in love in this garden, Victor. It’s very special. It’s a secret.”

Tatania Nikiforova was the most beautiful creature on earth, or at least it seemed that way to Victor. He watched, fascinated, as she winked at him and pulled up her skirts to climb higher into the arbutus, disappearing into the dense foliage for a moment and then reappearing with an apple in her hand, which she dropped down to Victor. As he bit into the fruit, Victor thought that his mother must be a gift from the heavens, descended from the trees to bring life and love in equal measure. _It’s magic,_ Victor thought, looking up at his mother’s face. _She is magic._

They visited the garden only sporadically after that; Victor was just beginning his schooling and the Baroness had a full social schedule, so it was rare that they could steal away without being interrupted. Victor bided his time, waiting for the next opportunity to immerse himself in the magic that was an afternoon alone with his mother; he was still waiting three years later, when his parents’ carriage was ambushed by bandits on the road back to the peninsula.

The day of their funerals was overcast, a grey fog that lay heavy on the world’s shoulders. Victor was silent and numb until the moment he saw his mother lying in her casket; in that instant he felt his heart break, and he fled the chapel as fast as his legs would carry him. He ran all the way back to the Nikiforov estate, through the lawns and around the hedge maze, until he reached the curtain of ivy. The garden door was locked, but there was a huge oak tree that grew nearby, its branches extending into the garden itself. Victor climbed up the tree with ease, pulling himself up to peer over the top of the wall, to look one last time at the flowers whose magic had felt so real for so long. His face fell.

The garden was dead. There wasn’t a trace of life in sight—not a bud, not a leaf, not a single blade of grass. Nothing but rotting leaves and gnarled branches.

Victor curled up against the trunk of the oak tree and finally burst into tears. He sobbed for his mother, desperately reaching for the shining memory of their first trip to the garden, but when he closed his eyes all he could see was the sickly pallor of her hands as she lay in repose. He remained in the tree even as night fell; he heard voices calling for him, but could not bring himself to answer. Eventually Victor fell asleep, and dreamed of the moment when his mother had disappeared into the treetops to fetch him an apple. Victor imagined that she was there with him, just a few trees away, and that as long as he stayed aloft he could pretend she would be returning at any moment. He could see the garden in his mind—closed off, and withdrawn, and dead. Doomed to be forgotten, unless he stayed there to remember it.

When he awoke alone, Victor rubbed away the tear stains on his cheeks, and vowed that he would never leave the trees again for as long as he lived.

 ~

Over the next two decades, Victor made the trees into his own kingdom; he built a platform where he could sleep and store clothing, and obtained food and other necessary supplies by bartering with the servants of the neighbouring estates. He even maintained his studies by befriending Lord Cialdini, who lived three estates to the west and leant Victor books by passing them out of the second floor window of his study. Victor explored the entire peninsula simply by leaping from tree to tree; he traveled further than any Nikiforov had ventured before, making new friends and allies, but he always returned to the garden in the end. He watched over it; first waiting for his mother to reappear and tell him it was all a bad dream, then waiting for the search party that never came for him, and finally simply waiting.

It was a foggy morning at the very end of winter, shortly after his twenty-seventh birthday, when the wait came to an abrupt halt.

Victor perched in the giant apple tree he often called home, peering over the wall, watching the tangled branches that obscured the stone walkway as they shuddered and snapped, announcing: _there is someone here_. The murky water in the dead fountain seemed to tremble with anticipation; Victor flattened himself against the branch, wincing as a knot in the bark dug into his side. Finally the figure emerged into the clearing, and Victor started, nearly smashing his face against the rock.

It was a young man.

Victor crept an inch closer. The man looked to be about his age; he approached the garden clearing tentatively, looking this way and that, and then heaved a heavy sigh that made Victor’s own shoulders feel taut. Victor slid down even further, out of sight, until he could smell the damp stone of the wall under his nose, and he closed his eyes against the sudden sting of intrusion—a spell abruptly broken, an illusion rudely shattered.

He’d expected a thief, or maybe a groundskeeper come to finally investigate this forgotten sad corner of the estate, but this man didn’t seem to be searching for anything, and he certainly wasn’t dressed like a gardener. When Victor chanced another look, he saw the man standing still, his face unreadable, taking in the decrepit details of the garden around him. And then, before Victor could get up the nerve to make his presence known, there was a rumble of thunder, promising rain within minutes. The young man looked up at the clouds, and Victor ducked behind the wall again, suddenly terrified of being caught. He heard branches snap and crunch, and eventually all was quiet; when he came out from hiding, the stranger was gone.

Victor exhaled in a shudder, looking down at the garden, searching for anything out of place. After so many years he’d all but memorized every pile of leaves, every patch of dirt; the man’s presence now made the familiar seem strange, as if the very air had shifted. The smell of petrichor was overwhelming, and another clap of thunder shook Victor out of what would have otherwise been a very long reverie; he just barely made it to his sheltered spot before the storm hit. As night fell, he sat, arms wrapped around his knees, watching the wall from a distance; and for the first time in years, he found himself shivering.

 ~

The next morning, Victor awoke to find that the storm had passed, taking with it the last of the winter clouds. The sun shone bright on his face, and he wondered if the day before hadn’t just been a particularly elaborate dream. But when he peeked over the garden wall, Victor’s heart dropped to his toes at the sight of a new, very different sort of intruder.

In all of his years in the trees, Victor had always kept an eye on the garden, and it had always remained stubbornly dead. No matter how much rain fell or how bright the sun shone, nothing had ever sprouted from the dirt; even the trees and bushes remained bare, accumulating a layer of dead leaves from the apple and oak trees which grew outside the wall. And now Victor could see the intruders clearly: three clusters of flowers in the nearest flowerbed, their colours starkly vibrant against the brown and grey lifelessness that surrounded them. They grew from the dirt as if they’d been sprouting for weeks.

Victor heard a rustle of movement as the young man from yesterday came into view, his footsteps crackling as he broke the branches and leaves beneath his feet. He carried a book under his arm, and seemed lost in thought and wasn’t looking where he was going. For an awful moment it seemed like the man was going to tread upon the flowers, and the beginnings of a cry escaped from Victor’s lips before he could stop himself—but the man paused just in time, and Victor clapped his hand over his mouth, heart suddenly pounding.

The man knelt, reaching out to touch the petals of a blushing pink flower, as his face flitted from surprise to confusion to awe.

“Hello,” he said softly, his voice carrying up through the stillness to reach Victor’s ears. “What have we here?”

The flowers did not answer, and so the man stood up, wiping his hands on his trousers. He smiled.

“Tell me, do you often try to break into other peoples’ gardens this way?” he called. Victor froze, confident he couldn’t be seen, but then the man’s gaze settled directly on him.

Caught, Victor rose from his position, swinging his legs over the branch and dropping down to sit on the high stone wall of the garden.

“Of course not,” he replied with all the bravado he possessed. “I’m no petty thief. In fact, I should ask what _you’re_ doing here. This garden belongs to the Nikiforov family; you’re trespassing.”

“My apologies,” the man replied. “I’m a guest of Otabek Altin; I went on a walk and must have gotten lost.”

Victor raised an eyebrow. The Altins lived next door; technically the apple tree belonged to them, but Victor never saw anyone come this far to the edge of the estate. He had only met Count Otabek once, when he’d accidentally interrupted a conversation between the Count and Lord Cialdini by knocking on the study window. Cialdini’s face had lit up with delight, as it always did, but Otabek had scowled dismissively, as if Victor was a gnat buzzing around his face. While the Nikiforovs had dedicated their lawns to topiaries and flower beds, the Altins had transformed the land around their house into polo fields, cricket lawns, and archery ranges. It was all very utilitarian, and all very treeless, which meant that Victor had almost no contact with anyone from the grounds—except now there was this stranger, bumbling into the garden like he owned the place. Victo’s eyes narrowed.

“How did you get past the door?”

He shrugged. “The lock was rusty; it gave way easily. I didn’t mean to intrude.” The man peered up at Victor with the strangest look in his eyes. “My name is Yuuri Katsuki. What’s yours?”

“Victor Nikiforov.”

Yuuri raised an eyebrow, his mouth turned in a half-smile. “Nikiforov? So would you be the baron, then? I heard that the house was abandoned years ago; I didn’t realize anyone was actually home.”

Victor pushed away the ache in his heart and plastered on a winning smile. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he replied, affecting as casual a manner as he could. “I ran away when I was young. And even so, you’re still trespassing.”

Yuuri looked at him for a moment, still wearing that curious half-smile, before finally looking down and pointing to some flowers with brilliant blue petals.

“Do you know what its name is?”

“It’s a flower,” Victor replied curtly. “It doesn’t have a name.”

“That’s periwinkle,” Yuuri said. “It’s a symbol of early friendship. Over there are pink peonies, representing shyness. And vervain, for enchantment. Almost all flowers have meanings; it’s something I’m quite fascinated by, actually.”

Victor felt his cheeks warm, and he swallowed. “Enchantment, shyness, and early friendship,” he repeated. “Are you...are you asking to be friends with me?”

Yuuri started, and when he looked up at Victor his expression was terrifyingly unreadable. He considered Victor for a moment, and Victor fought the urge to squirm like a small child.

“Weren’t you about to throw me out of this garden?” There was a teasing playfulness to his voice, which burrowed deep under Victor’s skin and made him long for things he hadn’t let himself miss for many years. Something in his body propelled him and he tentatively rose to a crouch, walking a few steps along the wall to where the arbutus crossed paths with the stone—the same spot where his mother had stood to fetch him the apple. After only a moment’s pause, Victor descended into the lower crook of the arbutus. He hadn’t sat there since he was eight.

Now that he was only a few feet off the ground, Yuuri looked taller, and Victor felt his cheeks warm as he took in the details of Yuuri’s face—his long eyelashes, the way the blue rims of his spectacles reflected in his warm brown eyes. Against his better judgement, Victor asked the question that was resting on the tip of his tongue.

“Why do you know so much about flowers?”

Yuuri sat on the bench nearby, staring at the ground. “I’ve always wanted to grow them,” he said, as if admitting a shameful secret. “It’s silly, but there’s something magic about them, don’t you think?”

Victor swallowed an excruciatingly large lump in his throat. “How long are you staying with Count Otabek? I’m sure he could give you a plot of land.” _And you’ll leave mine alone,_ he didn’t add.

Now Yuuri’s smile took on a twinge of sadness. “Ah, well, unfortunately it seems that the Altin estate has very little use for such things. That was the purpose of my walk, actually; I thought I might find a piece of earth to tend for my very own, out of the way where I wouldn't be a bother. Somewhere to just...sit with my thoughts. Otabek doesn’t really understand why I’d want such a thing.”

 _Somewhere to just sit with my thoughts._ Victor looked over the blue periwinkle again; it was so vibrant, so lush, so _alive_. The garden had been barren for decades; now, with the arrival of this handsome stranger named Yuuri, something seemed to be stirring.

Victor closed his eyes. For the first time since his mother’s death, he could see the garden in his mind’s eye, in all its colourful splendour. The memory had been gone so long that he thought he’d forgotten it.

“Victor?”

He shook himself out of his reverie. “Come back tomorrow,” he said, almost to himself.

“Pardon?”

Victor took a breath. “The Altins won't bother with flower beds,” he said. “This piece of earth is mine. And—and clearly it’s not as dead as I thought it was. So if you want to come here, you can. I won’t mind.”

Yuuri’s face lit up, beaming like the sun above their heads, and Victor felt his heart flutter in his chest.

“Okay,” Yuuri said softly, reaching out a hand. “Thank you, Victor. I will treat it well, I promise.”

Victor clasped Yuuri’s hand, flinching only slightly at the softness of his skin. “You’re welcome,” he croaked.

That night, Victor dreamed of his mother for the first time since her death, and woke up with her laughter ringing in his ears. When he looked in on the garden, Victor saw a new flower sitting in the dirt, sprung up overnight as if by magic. It was a bright red rose.

Victor had to hang upside down by his ankles in order to grab it, nearly falling on his head as the thorns dug into his flesh.

“How did you get here?” he murmured, surprised at the fluttering panicked excitement he felt as he stroked the rose’s petals. “Flowers don’t just come out of nowhere. They need to be planted in order to bloom.”

For some reason he thought of his mother and father, sitting together on the stone bench, and for a moment the rose seemed even redder in the light of the morning sun.

 ~

Yuuri came to the garden almost every single day. As spring took hold, he planted flowers, swept the stone steps clean of dirt, and disposed of the years of dead leaves that cluttered the corners, all while Victor watched from above. Yuuri could talk about flowers all day, and Victor found himself eager to listen, charmed by the lilting tone of Yuuri’s voice and charmed even more by the blush that crept up his cheeks when he thought he was talking too much. Once Yuuri was sufficiently flustered, Victor would take over the conversation, regaling Yuuri about his many adventures up and down the peninsula, and he found that the stories felt brand new when Yuuri listened to them.

Sometimes Yuuri talked about his hosts, the Altins. He was puzzled at their Spartan existence, where frivolity was politely but firmly discarded in favour of efficiency. Victor lay awake some nights wondering how such a sweet, funny man like Yuuri came to be close enough Otabek Altin to warrant an extended visit, but at the end of the day the reasons didn’t matter; Yuuri was there, and he was helping bring the garden to life again, and perhaps that was enough. A purple lilac appeared one morning after they’d discussed the Altins, and Victor watched Yuuri caress the tiny flowers, smiling almost to himself, as his lips formed the word _love_.

When Victor closed his eyes, he could see the garden in his mind—sleepy, and tentative, and unfurling.

As the days lengthened, Victor had to sneak into the garden to retrieve more red roses when they showed up overnight; he hung them upside down in the apple tree’s branches, swaying in the summer wind and wrapping him in their scent as he slumbered. Victor even borrowed a floriography book from Lord Cialdini, which he used just once, when he awoke to find a bright yellow flower bursting out of a cluster of _silenis viscaria_ that Yuuri was coaxing to life.

 _Yellow acacia_ , the book declared, _evokes a secret love, which the giver wishes the recipient may notice._

Yuuri was charmingly verbose on the subject of the flowers he was planting, and his plans for them; Yellow acacia was not in his roster, and yet it had sprung up overnight, just like the roses. Victor plucked and then dropped the acacia over the far side of the wall, watching it flutter to the ground and lie in the shade of the apple tree. He returned the book to Cialdini that evening.

Ecological mysteries aside, Victor found himself overjoyed to be spending so much time in the garden again. He looked forward to Yuuri’s arrival every morning, and began to think of the space as _their_ garden, rather than his mother’s. Spring became summer, and Yuuri’s flowers began to bloom; they were slow, growing little by little each day. Every now and again the flowers would spring up overnight, and Yuuri sometimes seemed surprised by this—and as his face brightened, Victor’s would secretly fall, for it meant that he’d failed to notice one of the mysterious intruders in time to pluck it away.

“Look, Victor! Love-in-a-Mist!” Yuuri exclaimed one morning, falling to his knees in the dirt to cradle a stunningly beautiful sapphire-hued flower whose petals fanned out like a Christmas wreath. “I didn’t even know it could grow in this climate.”

“What does it mean?” Victor asked, as was becoming tradition.

“It means ‘you puzzle me,’” Yuuri answered. “It’s always been one of my favourite floriography pieces, and it’s not used nearly often enough.” He plucked one of the Love-In-A-Mists and walked over to one of the east-facing flower beds, which was becoming overrun with colourful plants, stooping down and blocking Victor’s view. “You could combine this with Linaria bipartita, which begs the recipient to notice the sender’s love for them. A zephyr, for sincerity, and a Bird of Paradise, for magnificence and wonderful anticipation.” He turned around to reveal a small bouquet, which he presented to Victor. “Voila.”

Victor took the flowers, his eyes roaming over their delicate petals. “So what have you just told me?”

Yuuri blushed. “I, well. Roughly speaking, that arrangement would say: ‘I find you a puzzling, fascinating, magnificent wonder. I sincerely think I may love you, and I hope you notice.’ Or something to that effect.”

Victor felt words forming on the tip of his tongue, and he opened his mouth to say them, only to be cut off when Yuuri sighed and reached up, taking the bouquet out of Victor’s hands.

“I suppose I should give this to Otabek, actually,” he murmured.

Victor blinked. “Why on earth would you do that?”

“Well, I—that is to say, we’re betrothed to be married.”

Victor’s veins turned to ice. “You’re—to _Otabek_? Really?” he couldn’t stop the sneer of disgust in his voice, and the spark of his irritation was fanned to a flame when Yuuri nodded. Victor begged himself to keep quiet, but his mouth disobeyed. “What interest could you possibly have in that man?”

Yuuri straightened. “What business is it of yours?” he replied evenly.

“You can’t _love_ him,” Victor said. “And you can’t bring him these flowers.”

Now Yuuri’s eyes narrowed, half hurt and half defensive. “Why not? They’re my flowers. I’ve grown them. And I don’t recall needing to ask for permission to marry from a baron who ran away from his duties when he was a child and never grew up.”

Fury pulsed through Victor’s heart. “Get out,” he spat, forcing himself to watch as the hurt flashed through Yuuri’s eyes. “Leave, right now. That’s an order, from the baron of this estate. Get out before I have you arrested for trespassing.”

Yuuri’s hands were shaking, and when he dropped the bouquet the flowers seemed to scatter in all directions. “And what of your use of the Altins’ apple tree?” he snapped, his voice low but devastatingly clear. “If property rights are suddenly so important, why can’t you set foot onto the grounds of your own home, _baron_?”

Victor saw his mother’s hands clasped together, skin waxy and dull from death. The air suddenly felt cold and damp.

“You know nothing about me,” he heard himself say. “I had to grow up faster than you could imagine, _Yuuri_. And these aren’t your flowers; they’re in my garden, and they belong to me. If I ever see you here again, I will have you arrested.” He had no idea who the magistrate was now, nor how to get into town to fetch him.

For a moment it looked as though Yuuri was going to stand his ground, but then his shoulders sagged. “Goodbye, Victor,” he whispered. When he turned on his feet to leave, he crushed the Love-in-a-Mist beneath his heel.

Victor listened to Yuuri go, heart pounding in his ears, unable to tear his eyes away from the ruined flower petals now mashed into the stone. It wasn’t until the stone door slid shut that the reality of what he’d just said hit him fully, and the anger transformed into something that made it painful to stand, to sit, to crouch, to climb. Victor scrambled over the wall and down the branches of the arbutus, sliding to the crook where the trunk split in two, and then down further still, until his feet hit solid ground. Victor’s knees wobbled and gave way almost immediately, but he barely noticed; he crawled towards the Love-in-a-Mist, reaching a trembling hand out to touch what remained of its petals, but they were already dead and gone, turning the same brown as the rotten leaves that had carpeted the garden for so long.

Victor exhaled in a shudder which quickly became a sob. Something in his mind snapped with the horrific abruptness of a branch bearing too much weight, and when he was finally able to blink again he found himself standing in the middle of a massacre.

Every single flower Yuuri had planted was pulled from the soil and thrown on the ground. The flower beds were bare, the soil pockmarked with holes where things had been growing. The climbing plants lay pooled on the ground like severed ropes, and even the bushes had been stripped of green.

Victor looked down at his hands, now aching, his skin covered in dirt and blood and a soft sheen of yellow pollen. He fell to his knees once more, letting the silence creep up on him, watching as the bright yellows and reds and pinks of the petals oxidized and turned brown around him until the garden was as dead as the day his mother died.

He wept, then, harder than he ever had before, until he felt dizzy and sick, at which point he curled up on the ground, around the ruined remains of the Love-in-a-Mist. Victor sobbed out of grief that didn’t fully have a name, overwhelmed by the sadness that had been building up in his bones for twenty-odd years, knowing that no one was around to hear him.

At some point he fell asleep. In his dreams Victor saw a path overrun with gnarled and tangled branches, blocking his path. He struggled through them, dead leaves crunching beneath his feet, pushing aside twigs, trying to find the clearing.

He could see the garden in his mind, and it looked like a pair of beautiful brown eyes and sounded like a lilting, gentle laugh that echoed away to nothing before Victor could reach it.

 _Please,_ he whispered to the garden, and to himself. _Please, let me love you._

A seed began to sprout.

 ~

Victor opened his eyes and saw brilliant sapphire blue.

He sat up, wincing at the ache of a night spent on the hard ground, and blinked away the tears that had dried his eyelashes shut overnight. His vision cleared to reveal that he was staring at an entire patch of Love-in-a-Mist, most of which were growing out of the cracks in the stone.

“What…” the rest of the question died on Victor’s lips as he looked around.

The garden was covered in flowers, more than he’d ever seen in his whole life. Even when he’d come here with his mother, there hadn’t been this many. Blossoms overwhelmed the flower beds and crept up the stone walls and around the tree trunks; the fountain was covered in water lilies, and the cherub statue above it seemed to wear a cape of creeping ivy. Red, orange, blue, pink, yellow, purple—the flowers were everywhere, colours bright in the morning sun, almost seeming to shine in their own right.

Victor turned around in a circle, mouth agape with wonder.

“Victor?”

He turned back to see Yuuri standing at the edge of the garden clearing. Where once Yuuri had to fight his way past branches and thorns to make it to this spot, now there was a clear path from the garden door, strewn with petals that fell like multi-coloured snow from the plants that arced over the walkway.

Yuuri’s eyes were wide behind his glasses, shirt only partly tucked into his breeches and hair still mussed from sleep.

“You’re—you’re out of the tr—”

“—don’t marry Otabek,” Victor blurted, before he could stop himself. “I—I’m sorry, Yuuri. I was—there are things I wasn’t able to say—”

Yuuri looked around them, at the cascades of flowers and blossoms growing on every surface, so abundant they nearly blocked out the sky, and smiled.

“I know,” he said softly, stepping closer.

“How do you—”

Yuuri pointed to a cluster of tiny purple flowers. “That’s purple hyacinth, and it means ‘I’m sorry’. And those primroses, they mean ‘I can’t live without you.’ Yellow tulips, for hopeless love, and beside them are filberts, for reconciliation. The arbutus tree’s flowers mean ‘thee only do I love.’”

Victor swallowed the lump in his throat. “I—I didn’t do this.”

Yuuri stepped closer still, reaching out to take Victor’s trembling hand. “You did, though,” he replied, his smile widening. “There are flowers all over the place. They’ve overwhelmed the Altin estate, as well as your own. Otabek’s archery range is one large patch of jonquil and lungwort, and those aren’t even supposed to grow together.”

 _The flowers bloomed around us,_ Tatania’s voice echoed, her ghost carried by the twitch of petals in the breeze. Victor swallowed, looking up at his apple tree, stunned to see that the dried red roses hung in perfect view from this angle. He blushed.

“Yellow acacia, red chrysanthemums, red roses, red tulips, red camilias all around us,” Yuuri murmured, stepping even closer, until Victor could all but feel the beat of his heart through his chest. “They all mean ‘I love you,’ or some variation of it. The lawn outside is now a patch of lavender, for devotion. There are yellow irises and windflowers taking over the ivy on the outer walls of the garden. Victor, this has never been me; I’m not that good of a gardener. You’ve been making this magic.”

 _The flowers bloomed around us,_ she’d said, all those years ago. _We fell in love in this garden, Victor._

Finally he understood.

The flowers around them seemed to explode with vibrancy, and Victor tipped his head forward to capture Yuuri’s lips in a kiss. As Yuuri wrapped his arms around his neck, Victor closed his eyes.

He could see the garden in his mind—open, and awake, and alive.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments very much appreciated! 
> 
> Find me at [Tumblr](https://iwritevictuuri.tumblr.com), [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/iwritevictuuri), and [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/littleloststar)!


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